Cornel West, prominent public intellectual and progressive activist, has embarked on a new mission: to break up the duopoly of America’s political system and offer voters a fresh choice by running for president.
But doesn’t Dr. West – along with the other independent or third-party candidates – risk helping former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden in 2024? After all, third-party candidates proved crucial in key states in 2016, when Mr. Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“To me, brother Donald Trump is a bona fide gangsta and a neofascist. … So I understand the fears,” Dr. West told reporters at a breakfast Thursday hosted by the Monitor. But “brother Biden has a military adventurism as part and parcel of his past and present.”
Why We Wrote This
Presidential candidate and public intellectual Cornel West sits down with reporters at a Monitor Breakfast to talk about his candidacy and the future of America.
Both men, Dr. West says, are “beneath mediocrity,” though he sees some “positive features” in President Biden over former President Trump. Ultimately, he says, “we got one who’s pushing us toward a second civil war at home, and the other is pushing us toward a World War III abroad.”
And maybe, he suggests, 2024 isn’t a Biden-Trump rematch after all.
“Let’s go ahead and have debates. … See which way the country moves,” says Dr. West, a self-described socialist who over the years has been a professor of philosophy, religion, and African American studies at Harvard,